The farm and farmhouse

About Me

Hi! Im a wife in my mid twenties, living on a farm in the Midwest. Just trying to make ends meet and save for our future as we remodel our old farmhouse, and stay out of debt.
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As of March 2019

Archive for January, 2019

I can't believe it. I was surprised to received a $1,000 gift yesterday!

We decided we are going to put $500 into our EF, I am giving $100 as a gift to someone else needy I know, and the other $400 I will pay on the credit card. It's going down way faster than I imagined!

Husband gets paid tomorrow for the first time and we should be back on a normal budget. He has about 20 hours of overtime this week, so we are going to both go through our entire wardrobes and donate/trash all the clothes that we don't wear. Then figure out what items we badly need.

I finally got all the forms I needed so I submitted my taxes this morning. After paying the state and for the tax software I will net about $750. Which will be sent to the IRA. Glad it's over!

We got the first check from husband's disability and I paid $849 on the two credit cards! I can't pay anymore until the balance transfer goes through. Hopefully soon.

I may be getting a new car. A relative passed away and my family is offering their car to me. I am test driving it around to see if I like it. It's a much nicer car, that is newer, with fewer miles. But it's a lot bigger and gets bad gas mileage. So I have to decide if the space/luxury is worth paying more for gas.

I only drive to work 2 days a week. But my car is the main driver when we go on trips, or errands.

Basically I have a cheapo old Dodge Neon. The new car is a Buick Terraza. So a minivan/cross over. It would be nice for driving around future kiddos and for our road trips. (We usually borrow my mom's van) It is also AWD which is nice for the snow. I haven't been able to get my car out of the driveway since Friday...

#2 I applied for a new 0% interest credit card for 18 months. And was approved for enough to cover the ENTIRE remaining amount we have on two cards now. So woo hoo. We'll be down to one card and have a good long while to pay it off. Still hoping for the end of the year. I will update my balances once the transfer goes through.

#3 We got a letter in the mail that says we were approved for short term disability for husband's month off work! It looks like they have already mailed the check. Although there is a mistake. Originally we had him going back after 3 weeks, but we just got the release for 4 weeks. So the payment is missing a week. We have already submitted the forms with the correct date on them, so if they haven't fixed it in a couple days I will give them a call.

Very thankful for this. It will still be 2 1/2 weeks until he receives his normal paychecks again. But since I've put money back we should be able to pay most of the STD on the credit cards.

My husband saw his surgeon this week and was told he could go back to work in two weeks... So we turned in his work release at his job.

And then his primary doctor said no way, that's not enough time. She wants to extend it another two weeks. Eek. The doctors are meeting today to decide, but fingers crossed he doesn't have to wait another month. Ugh.

We don't want to go back to his boss and tell him that his leave has to extend. Also the disability company is such a major pain. They won't even approved our claim until we have a work release date.

If his time off does get extended that will be 6 weeks off. Yikes. We were originally told 2 weeks, then it was 3, then 4, now possibly 6. This is because his job is so physical. If he had a desk job or could go on light duty he could go back now. Thankfully our church gave us a gift this week which covers a week of bills.

Hoping the doctors agree 4 weeks off is enough, and that the disability comes through.

Escrow/EF savings is still automatic so our weekly $75 was deposited. I am thankful that even during tough times I can still continue to save something. Once we are back on track it would be nice to up that weekly deposit to $100. If this ordeal has shown me anything it is that we need a bigger emergency fund.

I found out that I did in fact get the large web design job I was hoping for. I will be paid $2,000 and I was planning on putting that towards animal savings but I'll wait and see how this month goes.

This is the month that I need apply for new 0% credit cards to transfer our balances to. I'll do that as soon as the statement balance hits next week. It would be really nice if I got one card with a high enough limit to put the entire amount on, but I'm guessing it will probably be two cards again. The current cards' promotional rate don't actually expire until March. So I may leave some on there that I am reasonably able pay off before March to avoid the balance transfer fee on as much as possible.

A couple days late, but I wanted to write out all our year end financial numbers.

Cash/Liquid Savings:

$590 Animal Fund
$690 Escrow Fund
$1,000 EF
$1,205 Car Fund

$3,486 Total Liquid Savings

Retirement:

$16,930 DH's 401K
$3,400 DH's IRA
$8,630 My IRA

$28,960 Total Retirement

Liabilities:

-$114,713 Mortgage
-$6,818 Home CC #1
-$5,542 Home CC #2

-$127,073 Total Liabilities / -$12,360 Non-Mortgage Debt

Our retirement accounts actually went down this year despite contributions, due to the bad market.

Our mortgage and debt went way up because of the home remodel.

Goal is to be back to no non-mortgage debt by April 2020. But it would be REALLY amazing to pay off the credits cards by the end of the year... We'll see. It would be tough, especially since we are missing the entire month of January pay from husband.